Does your web site pay you?

Well, it could......

Making your web site produce some revenue is not hard, I believe any one can do it, but it does take persistence. You're not going to be a millionaire by this time next month by using any of the information I supply on this page, but you will get an idea as to how the internet works, and where to go to get started. Look at this as a way of getting your site to pay for itself for now, look at making profit a little later :O)


Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the primary type of advertising on the internet today, and that's what I'll be talking about. You use the space on your site to advertise another persons goods or services, and you are paid for the results you send that person. You may be paid for physically showing the advert, you may be paid for clicks on the advert, you may be paid on actual sales - usually the later.

Some examples:

1. You place a banner on your site for MyOffers Competition Site. They would pay you for each and every member that comes from your site and registers for free.
2. You place an advert for Dell on your site, and they pay you a percentage of all goods sold to people from your site.
3. You place an advert for Google on your site, and they pay you for each and every click on that advert.

In the above examples, you would be called the affiliate (you are affiliated to the company you are advertising, hence affiliate marketing), and the company you are advertising is called the merchant.

There are many thousands of merchants in the UK willing to pay you in one of the above ways for space on your web site.


How To Find Merchants

Merchants who want space on your site are actually easy to find, you've just got to know where to look. Finding a merchant is very similar to finding a job. You could go to thousands of companies, and ask each for a job, or you could go to an agency. Agencies like this exist in affiliate marketing, but they are called networks.

A networks job is to act as an interface between affiliate and merchant - and to do all the paperwork! You join a network, you advertise any number of merchants from that network, and you get paid for the whole lot in one payment each month. All networks are free to join, and it's so easy that you don't even have to invoice them each month, they do it for you!


Real Time Statistics

Once you've put some of this together, and you have an advert on your site, you'll want to know how the advert is performing. The network supplies you statistics for all your adverts, and it's usually in real time! Most of them show you how many times the advert has been seen, how many times it's been clicked, how many sales have been made, and how much commission you are owed.
 

Where To Start

There's no better way to learn this stuff than to get stuck in. The first thing you should do is join a network, one that's easy to understand, has a good number of merchants to advertise, and supply great support. That network has to be Affiliate Future. The people that work at Affiliate Future are/were also affiliates, so have a direct understanding of everything you'll be doing.

Click here to visit Affiliate Future

Once you've registered, take a look though the merchant list. When choosing merchants it's important to keep the content of your site in mind. A racing car site will not sell many baby bottles, but it might do quite well selling formula one merchandise. Sound common sense? Most of affiliate marketing is :O)

Once you've chosen a few merchants who's adverts you'd like to put on your site, you'll need to apply for each one. Most merchants allow all requests, but some can be fussy. Once you've been accepted by a merchant to advertise them, you need to choose an advert to put on your site.

All merchants supply a selection of both text and image ads. You just select an advert, copy the code, and paste it in to your site.